Thanksgiving 2014

It is a special Thanksgiving for us this year. It was just over a year ago that we moved here to our little woods and farm. We still don't have a fun or cute name for our land, but we do love it here. For the first time in my life, I really felt that I was celebrating a harvest. For Thanksgiving dinner we made pumpkin pie and cheesecake from pumpkins we grew and eggs from our chickens. We had green beans and the last squash from our garden this summer. Fresh spinach salad from our winter garden along with rosemary and parsley to season the turkey and stuffing. Homegrown and homemade pickles and honey for the rolls. Next year we hope to add potatoes and onions to the list of things on the Thanksgiving table we grew ourselves. Maybe a turkey. We haven't decided on that yet.

I cooked everything this year. Jason is out with my flu. Such a bummer. He helped get the turkey ready last night. We brined/poached it and let it soak all night. It turned out fabulous. Super juicy and seasoned. It was a lot of cooking...but I said a prayer this morning and was so grateful to enjoy the day. Work in the kitchen and all.  We had the Elders over, Elder Smith from Seattle and Elder Nelson from St. George. They are good missionaries and it is always nice to have them in our home. I got their mom's email addresses and sent the pictures from today and a short Thanksgiving note.

Our annual Hardy Family Football game was short this year. A sick dad and super cold windy day put a damper on the fun. At least for Grace and Jason. I took Grace to the minute clinic last night because of an ear infection, she is not feeling 100% and the cold wind hurt her ear. Maybe if the chickens could join the girls team we could beat those darn boys. Or if Grace and Sophie would practice catching...

 I finally remembered to do a Gratitude Tree with our family. Every year I see the Kroeber's and think we need to do one. This year we finally did! Some of my favorite things on the tree were: Grace - socks, Emma and Joseph (Smith), toilet paper, Sophie - George Lucas, Beef Jerky, scriptures (Sophie has been reading daily on her own as a goal. She doesn't want to talk to me about it at all. Just her thing.) Noah - Henry (our tractor) and our woods, Luke - music, he was the only one who thought of music, and video games. I swear Luke would spend all of his days attached to a screen if he could.

Grace found these fox salt and pepper shakers on a random shelf at Walmart yesterday. I told her if they were less then $5 we could get them after the girls told me they had never used salt and pepper shakers. We have just had the grinder things from Costco their whole lives. Poor deprived children! The fox shakers were only $1 and Grace was super excited!

We planted our orchard this week. I am so excited for our heirloom trees! It is a challenge to grow fruit in our area because the trees are susceptible to disease. Heirloom trees are much more resistant as they have been here for sometimes more than a 100 years.

We have 3 peach trees, a Hale Haven, Red Haven and Elberta. A Shinto asian pear and 2 local pears, a Keiffer and Plumblee. We have a Granny Smith apple, an Arkansas Black,a Blacktwig, and  a Liberty apple tree. The mature tree we already have we think is a Gala or Fuji. We also have 2 huge over grown ancient apple trees on the edge of the woods we are hoping to use to make cider next fall. We lost every single apple this year due to a late frost. Hoping on at least the mature trees to get some sort of harvest next fall. It would be fun to have an apple pie for Thanksgiving with apples we grow ourselves!

Today especially I am grateful for my kids and husband. How blessed I feel to be the mother of this family and how unqualified. As we were saying what we were grateful for at the table today Jason said he was grateful to learn things from our kids and Noah was surprised. He said that he didn't know we learned things from him. I am sure he has no idea, but being parents have taught Jason and I more then anything else in this life. I feel blessed today and grateful for the abundance the Lord has given me in my life.